Links 28/10/2009: X.Org 7.5 Out, Qualcomm Announces Open Source Subsidiary | Boycott Novell

Exploring the reality behind exclusionary deals with Microsoft and their subtle (yet severe) implications

Vietnam will be a country luring Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) projects to bring more business opportunities to local enterprises, according to the organizers of the 2009 GNOME Asia Summit.

According to the GNOME Foundation, Asia, including Vietnam, will be a destination to develop more FOSS projects because many countries in the region have policies to encourage the ...

use of FOSS in business and in Government agencies.

Those who insist on reiterating the same tired line that Linux isnt ready for the desktop may have axes to grind instead of opening their minds. When we have Professionals of many walks using Linux on a daily basis and as their only OS, then you have to question the motive or experience of those making such statements. Besides, we have 12 year olds using it on a daily basis.

The following Linux distributions were announced last week: Fedora 12 Beta, CentOS 5.4, Ubuntu 9.10 Release Candidate and Elive 1.9.51. In other news: Novell releases the second beta version of the upcoming Banshee 1.6 player and Ubuntu 9.04 offering from Dell. An in-depth review of the KeePassX 0.4.1 application is also present in this edition. The weekly ends with the video clip of the week, the latest Linux distributions released/updated last week and the development releases.

Over the past few years, any Linux developer you ask would quickly recommend buying computer hardware with an Intel chipset. When it comes to Linux support, especially in the mobile realm, Intel had the best support hands down. In fact, even my first generation Asus EeePC with the tiny 7 screen supported Compiz acceleration out of the box! It was all thanks to Intel and their close relationship with the Linux community.

GDCs LINUX-based servers are one of the most robust and reliable servers on the market

If you have some combination of Windows, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, Solaris and Oracle in your data center and you follow our virtualization selection recommendations, your environment will support multiple virtualization software platforms. Each platform has its own set of virtualization management tools, which creates licensing and maintenance complexity.

Ive gotten some flack from a few of my readers over on Desktop Linux Reviews for using virtualization software to run Linux distros. Some people feel that virtualization is cheating or that it somehow it warps the review.

Once you start playing with distros, you may become what is called a distro-hopper. They love playing with various Linux distros, and jump from one to the next, always looking for that special distro that will rock their world once and for all.

So Ive just returned from Tokyo, where I attended the 2009 Kernel Summit and the first ever Japan Linux Symposium. My body clock is expected sometime later this week. It was a tiring but rewarding week, and not just because the sushi was so good.

Perhaps the most interesting session was how Google uses Linux, led by Mike Waychison. Mike gave us a much clearer view of how the Linux kernel is employed in Googles production systems than we have ever had before. It was interesting to see the extreme pressures put on Linux by Googles workload and the equally extreme responses that Google has had to make.

X Server 1.7 was released earlier this month thereby paving the way for the release of X.Org 7.5, which is finally out there this afternoon. X.Org 7.5 consists of X Server 1.7.1 and all of the latest drivers, libraries, and other modules.

The X Input Extension has also been revamped as part of adding MPX and it is now more dynamic in its handling of input devices.

What interests me about these completist apps is that they are commonplace in FOSS and rare in proprietary software. The reason is probably that FOSS has more demanding and independent-minded users, many of whom are also developers and in a position to insist on their own preferences

NCP engineering GmbH today announced the availability of software-based NCP Secure Enterprise Server for Linux operating systems.

Filip was rewarded with an incredibly annoying bogus app that didnt care what platform it was installed on. Win Police Pro set up shop and began scanning his WINE C: drive for viruses, and WINE neatly transformed the Windows system tray alerts to Gnome notifications. The infection was also able to attach itself to the WINE registry.

While its not the most positive endorsement of WINE around, its still pretty impressive that an app like this was able to function without missing a beat (apart from a single error message).

The announcement regarding the CrossOver 8.1 series codenames was made on the CodeWeavers blog. No release date has been given for either the next CrossOver or CrossOver Games releases, but we would expect them to happen before years end. Left 4 Dead 2 is being released on the 17th of November thereby putting the CrossOver Games release a few weeks out at a minimum.

Among the new features we find support for Jack-MIDI and the ability to summon Linuxsampler as a DSSI or LV2 plugin instrument. Alas, its LV2 incarnation did not work for my current builds of Ardour nor would it instantiate with the lv2_jack_host software. I was able to invoke it as a DSSI plugin under Sean Boltons ghostess DSSI host, but the UI was minimal to the point of unusability. Im happy to admit that the problems may be on my end, and I shall continue testing the Linuxsampler plugins with other hosts.

Many KDE 3 users swear by the K menu and would dare anyone to challenge it with something better. Fortunately for those people, KDE 4 retained that menu version as an option. For the rest of us, there are a couple of more robust menus that offer a variety of features. Lancelot is a third-party menu that has now entered into the KDE fold. It is the one I use, and many others have found it pretty useful. In this post, I will present to you some of Lancelots features so that you can decide if it is right for you.

Yes, really! Kates Vi Mode finally support some of the most command commandline mode commands from Vim. What can be done from the Kate editor part is limited by the fact that it cant control its hosting application, but Kate the application has now gotten support for the following commands:

* w, wq, wa, wqa

* new, vnew

Leeenux Linux is an operating system for netbooks, mainly for ASUS Eee PC with 7 screen, but works on all netbooks that have Intel graphics. It is based on Ubuntu and easypeasy and contains only free and open source software.

Vuurmuur 0.8 bèta 2 is released. Vuurmuur (Dutch for Firewall) is a powerful Firewall Manager built on top of the Linux Iptables.

Many mainstream Linux distributions like Fedora, Ubuntu, and Mandriva provide support for popular netbook models. Consequently, they run on your little companion pretty much right out of the box. However, the desktop metaphor that works so well on conventional PCs and laptops doesnt translate very well to the netbook computer.

Why? Because netbooks are designed for radically different usage scenarios. Realizing that, developers have been trying to build an alternative interface that would provide quick access to key applications and let you operate your netbook with a minimum effort.

The Linux operating system continues to grow in the server space, but has yet to make inroads on enterprise desktops.

Q: What do you currently do in open source? What do you love about it?

A: Im a member of Red Hats Community Architecture team. I spend most of my time on open source in education teaching professors how to teach open source, leading the Fedora Marketing team, and generally getting things out of the way of people who want to Get Stuff Done. Basically, my job is to be contagiously enthusiastic. Its important to have the tech and communication skills to follow through on whatever gets sparked up but really, I get to Be Excited for a living, which is pretty awesome. Outside of my day job, I also serve on the Sugar Labs Oversight Board and am learning a tremendous deal about project governance that way.

The attendees were not satisfied with the first answer RMS gave to Brian, that Harish Pillay (Chief Technical Architect, Red Hat Singapore), chose to ask RMS what more he had to say, with regards to the letter hed written. He answered quite candidly in this video, which Brian chimed in for as well.

My main affiliation is with the pkg-perl and pkg-ruby-extras groups, although my activity has declined in both due to real-life constraints But Im always trying to step back in and get back to speed with both. Package-wise, besides this, I am maintaining the Cherokee webserver and few other minor packages.

Besides this, since 2005 (and except for 2008), I have been part of the DebConf organization team. Organizing such a big, complex conference is a real challenge and a very, very rewarding experience.

What do French gendarmes, Andalucian school children, Wikipedia and San Francisco International airport have in common?

It is not the set up for a tortuous pun. Instead all of them are big users of the free Ubuntu operating system.

The desktop and server editions of the Karmic Koala Ubuntu 9.10 release were officially launched today, although Canonical was talking up the server edition two weeks ago, which includes an integrated, EC2-compatible cloud computing environment that is based on the open source Eucalyptus Project and uses KVM virtual machines. But the desktop edition has seen plenty of work, as El Reg explained in this review of the release candidate at the beginning of the month.

1. The User Experience: We wanted to bring design and user experience to [the Linux] desktop. Shuttleworth believes Ubuntu 9.10 achieves those goals.

He added that there are real benefits to having a complete platform, giving developers the opportunity to both develop and deploy applications using Ubuntus brand of Linux.

On October 29, Canonical is set to release Ubuntu 9.10 (codenamed Karmic Koala), the newest installment in the Ubuntu product line. In anticipation of this release, we took the release candidate (RC) for a test drive. Ubuntu 9.10 RC comes on a LiveCD just like its predecessors and allows you to test a fully-functional installation of the operating system without installing it. The boot process looks very different from previous versions, especially since the old progress bar has been replaced with one that just moves from left to right while providing very little useful boot progress information.

What frustrates me is the term cloud has come to mean anything with an Internet connection, including some stuff that really looks familiar like internal IT, said Shuttleworth in an interview. Its fair to say that in Ubuntus case, though, its not a stretch.

Ubuntu fans will already know that there are three more days until the latest version of Ubuntu drops, and well be knee-deep in coverage when it does. Shortly after version 9.10, or Karmic Koala, lands on the metaphorical shelves, the next round of development will hit the ground running.

With Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) set to debut this week, heres a run down of all the new features and changes covered by WorksWithU in the last several months.

As the final non-LTS release before Lucid Lynx in April, Karmic is heavy on new featureswhich are likely to be less pronounced in Ubuntu 10.04, where Canonical will concentrate on stability and performance.

Since the launch of Desktop Linux Reviews, Ive covered a number of different remastered versions of Ubuntu Linux. But I havent done a review of Ubuntu itself. I wanted to wait until there was a significant enough release as Id done a review for ExtremeTech back when I was a full-time employee there.

Im happy to note that Ubuntu Linux has hit version 9.10 and has some nifty new features that make it worth reviewing here.

Karmic Koala had noticeably improved boot times, and the new IM client seems useful. I was happy to report that the 64-bit flavor seems to be back to feature-parity with the 32-bit one. The Ubuntu One cloud thing really doesnt affect me much either way, but its there for those who might use it.

Its inevitable due to the timing of this release that 9.10 will get compared with Windows 7. I wont go into details but suffice to say I dont see Karmic Koala causing any grand upset of the established Windows userbase. Can it hold its own against Windows 7 in terms of stability, utility on older hardware, and included free software packages? Yes. Is it as shiny as 7? No.

That being said, Ubuntu 9.10 is still a good example of a useful-to-everyone Linux distribution that Id have no trouble giving away to less than computer savvy friends without much worry about midnight tech support calls.

iWave Systems of Bangalore announced a Linux-compatible, Intel Atom-based reference design for UMPCs (ultra mobile PCs) or in-car computers. The iW-Rainbow-G6 is equipped with a 7-inch touchscreen, and is available with optional cellular and GPS modules, the company says.

Wind River today announced that Belgium-based fifthplay, a subsidiary of the Niko Group, has selected Wind River Linux to enable its new home automation gateway.

Linux provides the ability to partition safety and non safety critical elements of the same application on a single hardware platform. It also provides high potential for features and innovative middleware, often adding a layer of complexity if safety is required.

Most wearable computers weve seen feature a head-mounted display tethered to a small PC system in a backpack or worn on a belt. Heres a slick little system that does away with the cord, fitting the entire system in the glasses.

[Pascal Brissets] WXHMD is based on the tiny Gumstix Overo Fire computer-on-module which features a beefy, 3D-capable OMAP processor that runs Linux.

The future smartphone market will be driven by operating systems and user demand for functionality and experiences the phone can provide, according to industry analyst In-Stat.

Perhaps, most importantly, it paves the way for a variety of Linux-based mobile OSs to follow in Androids already successful footsteps. It will have widely felt ripples throughout the market as OS manufacturers are forced to either adapt or fall behind as relics. The times, they are a-changin, and in five years, I would not be surprised if the mobile OS market only vaguely resembles the current one.

Welcome to another edition of our State of the Mobile Web report. I think this might be our most fascinating report yet.

The N900 will start shipping around the end of November and will cost $650. Well have a full review on the finished hardware before then. So far the N900 shows a great deal of promise Nokia is definitely doing the right thing when it comes to an open platform and a lack of Symbian. Now if only they could get a carrier to subsidize the device and help bring the cost down a little bit.

In response to the mobile devs, HTC has previously stated it was waiting for its own developers to provide the source before releasing it publicly. As late as last week, HTC representatives had emailed developers saying, At the moment we do not know when the kernel source for the Hero will be released, and We are still pushing our developers to provide us with the source code and for the links to be added. Since the Android kernel is licensed under the GPL, this delay was creating both dissatisfaction and controversy in the community.

Droid does replaceable batteries, Droid does open source, Droid also apparently does marketing mishaps. A Motorola employee accidentally launched the official Motorola Droid webpage before quickly taking it down. While the site is now dormant we have a screenshot and a bunch of the specs thanks to the mistake.

That the Google Android operating system has been successful in attracting significantly more applications for consumers in its first year vis-à-vis what the Windows Mobile has achieved in nearly ten years, is quite evident from the fact that the Android has essentially won over some of the biggest cellphone manufacturers in the world!

Developer Nathan Freitas has announced that the native C Tor application has been successfully ported to Android, including an application that installs, runs and provides the glue needed to make it useful to end users. The Onion Router, commonly referred to as Tor, is free software designed to provide internet anonymity to users while browsing online. It does this by bouncing the communications around a distributed network of relays run by volunteers from all around the world, preventing visited sites from learning a users physical location.

But I still suspect that Vista with Lipstick will not work as well as a good Linux distribution on typical netbook hardware. Even more importantly, while Microsoft has been busy the past couple of years trying to put the lipstick on Vista, various Linux groups have been improving netbook-specific versions. The result is things like Ubuntu Netbook Remix 9.10, which I think is rather nice (and a huge improvement over UNR 9.04), Moblin, which I absolutely hate but apparently it is very good for other types of users, and the KDE netbook version, which is still in early development but the early versions of it on Mandriva and Kubuntu look very interesting.

But Shuttleworth contended today that right now, Ubuntus story is pretty good for peripheral support, pointing to smartphones as the biggest remaining challenge.

People and organizations who want to truly go open need to see this as a journey, one which will require that they change their methods of communication and decision-making, not just how their content is published. The extent to which they are able to fully embrace the open paradigm will determine the potential benefits to the project.

Qualcomm said its new firm will develop open source for things like Linux, Webkit, Symbian, Android, and Chrome, and that it has transferred a number of its experienced software engineers to the new subsidiary.

Qualcomm has built a new subsidiary to better integrate its products with mobile open-source software, in hopes of capitalizing on the trend toward open platforms in the mobile industry.

Bangalore: Open source has once again excelled against software companies/vendors. Nearly half of the enterprises think that a software purchase is successful only if the software is installed/deployed.

In addition to the well-known Asterisk, there is a vibrant community of open source software PABX systems that can be used for internal and service provider IP telephony.

By leveraging Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) and other standard protocols, open source IP PABXs have achieved some impressive advancements over the years and the integration options for third party apps, like GoogleTalk and Jabber, promises to make them an attractive alternative for enterprises investigating low-cost unified communications (UC) solutions.

The most popular Private Cloud implementation comes from Eucalyptus Systems. This was started as a research project by the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara before it was distributed through Ubuntu Server by Canonical that promotes Ubuntu and other OSS.

The Fosstrak open-source software suite provides core components for RFID applications, and includes an EPCIS Repository, a Tag Data Translation (TDT) Engine, Application Level Events (ALE) middleware and a Low-Level Reader Protocol (LLRP) Commander.

Technology executives from across the country will descend on Nashville Nov. 5-6 for the first ever Enterprise LAMP Summit. The event, created by Nashville-based technology strategy company Remarkable Wit and sponsored by several local companies and business groups, will explore the utility of the open source software stack Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP, Python and Perl, hence the LAMP acronym for large businesses.

The

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